He took me around the corner and a block and a half south on Tenth Avenue to a tavern that belonged at the end of somebody’s qualification. I didn’t catch the name and I’m not sure if it had one. They could have called it Last Stop Before Detox. Two old men in thrift-shop suits sat together at the bar, drinking in silence. A Hispanic in his forties stood at the far end of the bar, sipping an eight-ounce glass of red wine and reading the paper. The bartender, a rawboned man in a tee shirt and jeans, was watching something on a small black and white television set. He had the volume turned way down.

Durkin and I took a table and I went to the bar to get our drinks, a double vodka for him, ginger ale for myself. I carried them back to our table. His eyes registered my ginger ale without comment.

It could have been a medium-strength scotch and soda. The color was about right.

He drank some of his vodka and said, “Aw, Jesus, that helps. It really helps.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What you were asking before. Where do we go from here. Can’t you answer that yourself?”

“Probably.”

“I told my own sister to buy a new teevee and a new typewriter and hang some more locks on the door. But don’t bother calling the cops. Where do we go with Dakkinen? We don’t go anywhere.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“We know who killed her.”

“Chance?” He nodded. “I thought his alibi looked pretty good.”

“Oh, it’s gilt-edged. It’s bottled in bond. So what? He still could have done it. The people he says he was with are people who would lie for him.”

“You think they were lying?”

“No, but I wouldn’t swear they weren’t. Anyway, he could have hired it. We already talked about that.”

“Right.”

“If he did it he’s clear. We’re not going to be able to put a dent in that alibi. If he hired it we’re not gonna find out who he hired. Unless we get lucky. That happens sometimes, you know. Things fall in your lap. One guy says something in a gin joint and somebody with a grudge passes it on, and all of a sudden we know something we didn’t know before. But even if that happens, we’ll be a long way from putting a case together. Meanwhile, we don’t figure to kill ourselves over it.”

What he was saying was no surprise but there was something deadening about the words. I picked up my ginger ale and looked at it.

He said, “Half the job is knowing the odds. Working the cases where you got a chance, letting the others flap in the breeze. You know the murder rate in this town?”

“I know it keeps going higher.”